If you read or watched or listened to any news reports during the holiday season you undoubtedly heard that video games were at the top of the heap in terms of ‘most wanted gift items’ … well, aside from 60″ LCD TV’s for everyone’s bedroom. But looking over the latest sales numbers including data through the end of 2007 is simply staggering in terms of the volume of systems sold by the 5 currently shipping ‘next gen’ handhelds and consoles.

2007 Sales Figures: Here are the numbers of systems sold worldwide since launch:
– Nintendo Wii – 20.25 million
– XBOX360 – 16.64 million
– Playstation 3 – 9.43 million

– Nintendo DS – 66.45 million
– Sony PSP – 30.64 million

So what does this say? That the Wii has sold 20% more units than the XBOX360 despite being on the market only half the time … and being constantly supply constrained. It is also interesting to put these numbers in context – the Wii has now sold nearly as many units in just over a year as the GameCube did through its’ entire life. It is also interesting that the Wii has sold nearly as many systems in the US alone as the PS3 has sold worldwide!

On the handheld front, the PSP continues to sell very well – yet with each week it falls further and further behind the DS. That is because the DS is fast approaching the GBA in terms of lifetime sales, having already zoomed by the NES and SNES … and it is likely to become the top selling all-time game system. So at 30 million systems, the PSP has beat the GameCube and XBOX and is approaching the Sega Genesis and N64 … not too shabby for a system so many have called ‘doomed’.

Tie-in Ratio – this is touted as a critical number for good reason: it represents how much software is being sold for the console. The implication is that with higher sales comes greater commitment by third parties which in turn leads to longer console lifetime. The Wii has been closely watched for a couple of reasons – a history of mainly Nintendo published games doing well and a history of lousy tie-in rates for the GameCube and early history of the Wii. The year-end data seems to indicate that trend is reversing.

December:
– Wii – 8.11
– XBOX360 – 7.76
– PS3 – 5.04

Lifetime:
– XBOX360 – 7.0
– Wii – 4.64
– PS3 – 4.24

Stupid NPD Tricks for PC

Here is the run-down of PC game sales, during what should have been an excellent year for PC game sales, since it was certainly a great year for PC games.

Computer retail game sales in the United States totaled $910.7 million, or 36.4 million units, a decrease over last year’s results, when PC games sold in a retail setting saw revenue of $970 million.

Two major franchises – Vivendi/Blizzard’s World Of Warcraft and Electronic Arts’ The Sims – dominating much of the charts. The full run-down is as follows:

1. World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Vivendi) – 2.25 million
2. World Of Warcraft (Vivendi) – 914,000
3. The Sims 2: Seasons Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) – 433,000
4. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision) – 383,000
5. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (Electronic Arts) – 343,000
6. Sim City 4 Deluxe (Electronic Arts) – 284,000
7. The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts) – 281,000
8. The Sims 2: Bon Voyage Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) – 271,000
9. Age Of Empires III (Microsoft) – 259,000
10. The Sims 2: Pets Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) – 236,000

However, digital downloads were not factored in to the NPD data, since the firm only tracks bricks-and-mortar retail sales currently, making it difficult to track exactly how the PC market is trending as a whole with the rise of casual games and even digital downloads for more ‘hardcore’ titles.

That last statement is critical. How many digital games did you buy this year? My copies of Crysis, Bioshock, The Orange Box and many others were all digital – not to mention the stuff like Overlord that I played through GameTap! At least there is some acknowledgment of their cluelessness – perhaps highlighted by the fact that they see PC gaming as ‘dominant’ despite seeing (by their numbers) an ~6% decrease while console/handheld games jumped ~28%!

“The PC games sales landscape is changing to one that is increasingly reliant on digital sources of revenue,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier told GameSpot. “Our sales reflect the retail climate but there is a lot of gaming sales activity that is generated from digital downloads and subscriptions. I think the PC market continues to be quite healthy and we’re continuing to work on how to get our arms around the spending that occurs outside of retail. A number of our [surveys] ask respondents to indicate which platforms they game on, and the results of those questions make it very clear that the PC remains very prevalent, if not dominant, in the total gaming picture.”

It is also interesting that in a year seemingly dominated by Chicken Littles predicting the fall of western civilization due to video games, the amount of games sold that are considered ‘family friendly’ saw a massively disproportionate increase compared to other segments:

The ESA also specifically pointed to a handful of trends, saying that sales in the “family entertainment” genre of games more than doubled, up 110 percent from 2006. Continuing to paint a family-friendly image of the industry, the ESA noted that less than 16 percent of games sold last year were rated M for Mature, with games rated T for Teen representing 28 percent of games sold, and more than 56 percent of games carrying a less restrictive rating than that.

All in all a great year for everyone – I think this is the last year anyone should even bother reading the NPD PC sales, they have really become completely irrelevant. It will be interesting to see how things shape up in the console and handheld space over the next year.

… as another article I read said – one look at the sales figures and no WONDER we’re all broke!

Tags: Misc